At the Brigade report, usually a video review of the last year is presented. This is the clip about my battalion’s yearly training in September 2009: moving some tracked vehicles back from Simplon pass (I was with the motorcycle team for traffic regulation – not shown, unfortunately) and dealing with (staged) fugitives arriving in a train.
The clip (German only, by the way) was created by the video team of the Infantry Brigade 4 of the Swiss Armed Forces.
An Afghan girl looks out from a doorway at an Afghan National Army soldier who helps search an area thought to have been used recently as a firing position by Taliban militants, during a joint U.S. - Afghan patrol in the Pech Valley, Kunar province, northeastern Afghanistan, Sunday Jan. 24, 2010. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)
Move over
As a recruit in 2000, I was – just like everybody in the Swiss army – equipped with the then standard “Model 1961” soldier’s knife. Pretty basic:
Since about one year, there’s finally a successor being handed out to the recruits, the “Soldier’s Knife 08”. Had to have it.
Please notice: no corkscrew, so there go all the jokes about the Swiss army and its knife.
Oh, and if you have a modest $460.- spare, you can now get a replica of the first Soldier’s knife ever (“Model 1891”). Only four times 1884 pieces are produced, so quick!
One of the gifts for my boss moving from industrial to academic research (he’s now professor at my old university): “discharge in a plate”. Cool, hu? I was told it’s produced by charging a plane in the block by means of an electron beam and then pushing a grounded pin into it, leading to this nice discharge pattern.
Danish Royal Guard takes a nap while standing guard, and his comrades “forgot” to wake him up.
Or maybe it was different.
“Silhouettes of Jazz” was produced at the computer graphics laboratory of ETH Zurich. The algorithm used can produce 3D bodies that, when lit up from different sides, cast shadows of an arbitrary shape – a different one for each side!
Just watch it already.
See the project website at http://www.silhouettesofjazz.com for credits.
Umm… I’m starting to get a little confused.
Omg, wired keyboards, wired mice? Totally 2009 ;)
On the other hand, like this at least you know what belongs to what, right?
GPOYW: almost 10 years ago, as a recruit, operating the cable winch.
Today, about 600 days of service later, I interviewed for a very different position from the one I currently have in the army. Now if only my captain plays along and lets me go!
It has happened
I’m now officially one of the grown-ups I promised myself not to become when I was around seven. You know, the kind that stops their car just because a snow ball hit the wind shield.
In my defense, my perspective on holding paper ball battles in a full bus and being extremely rude to everyone has also changed a little since then.
Brats.
About Me
My name is Benjamin. I live in Zurich and work as an "associated scientist" for a cool Swiss company in one of their corporate research centers, and this is my outlet for random stuff.
You can ask me questions.
You can submit whatever you want to this site (I have to approve it though).
Check out the tumblelog of my house: N69
